LT Spice IV

SgtWookie

Joined Jul 17, 2007
22,230
Nope, and I've been running it on Windows XP Pro and Windows 7 on Intel CPUs w/>=1gb RAM with virtually no problems at all. Occasionally, I've run out of memory - but that's because I usually have a bunch of other stuff going on in the background.

You need to give some details about your system. You may have a flaky driver. Video drivers are notorious for causing system instability.
 

Thread Starter

BillO

Joined Nov 24, 2008
999
XP with 3GB (actually 4, but its XP)
Pentium E5300 @ 2.60GHz
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS w 260.99 driver release.

I don't have a problem with rendering images. The problems are strange. After a few changes to a schematic, random things will happen during the simulation runs. Sinusoidal signal sources will turn to noise generators, resistors will take on strange values, transistors will have unpredictable gain, diodes act like wires, etc...

I have to re-start the program, re-load the circuit and everything is okay again.
 

SgtWookie

Joined Jul 17, 2007
22,230
Are you sure you don't have any viruses/spyware on your system?

Have you performed a CHKDSK lately? You might have some problems going on (crosslinked files, for example).
 

Thread Starter

BillO

Joined Nov 24, 2008
999
The viruses would be LT Spice specific? If they are there, they do not seem to affect anything else.

I guess I could do a chkdsk on it.

Thanks Sgt. W.
 

SgtWookie

Joined Jul 17, 2007
22,230
I've had a corrupted Windows swap file (virtual memory) do strange things to various programs. But, run Chkdsk first. You'll have to schedule it to run after a reboot.

By default, Windows manages your virtual memory, and that results in your drive getting badly fragmented, slowing things to a crawl.

CCleaner is a very good utility for getting rid of garbage on your computer. Download a freeware version of it here: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/standard
Run it before you defrag your drive.

"MyDefrag" is a cool and free defragmenting utility; much better than the defrag utility that comes with Windows.
Link: http://www.mydefrag.com/

After you've downloaded and installed those two utilities
Go into your Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> "Settings" button under Performance -> Advanced tab -> under Virtual Memory, click on drive C: and select the "No paging file" radio button, then "set". It'll complain about it, but it'll accept it if you insist.

Then reboot in Safe Mode, and run MyDefrag. Select your C: drive, and the System Monthly script. After MyDefrag completes (will take a long time the 1st time), go back into your control panel -> system -> etc. and set your swap file to a fixed size of 3G or so, then reboot normally.
 
Top